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Attorneys for Gibson Guitar will return to federal court as early as Dec. 12 to argue that valuable ebony woods seized by the federal government in a 2009 raid must be returned.

The Nashville guitar maker has been raided twice in two years by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agents on suspicions it violated the Lacey Act. The environmental protection law bars imports of woods from endangered forests around the world and requires U.S. companies to comply with other countries’ environmental export restrictions.

Gibson Guitar’s outspoken CEO Henry Juszkiewicz has forcefully denied the allegation in numerous media appearances since the latest federal raid in August. He contends that the armed federal agents’ descent on the guitar maker’s offices to seize raw materials in the late summer raid was a clear case of government overreach.

Lawmakers, including Tennessee congressional leaders Jim Cooper, D-Nashville, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Brentwood, have since proposed legislation to amend the law that Gibson is being investigated for possibly violating. The case has attracted the attention of environmentalists, musicians, the wood industry and tea party members.

In a downtown Nashville courthouse, Gibson’s attorneys are seeking the return of $70,000 in wood imported from Madagascar that was seized in 2009 and that has remained in government hands since then. Last month, at the request of prosecutors, a federal judge agreed to put the case on hold so it would not “adversely affect the investigation and the prosecution of a related criminal investigation” — in effect, keeping the wood indefinitely with the government.

This week, however, U.S. District Court Judge William Haynes agreed to a request by Gibson lawyers to reconsider his ruling.

Haynes has ordered new oral arguments in the case to decide whether Gibson should be allowed to have its wood returned.

A second date of Dec. 16 was scheduled in case it proves necessary to change the Dec. 12 date, according to Haynes’ order.

In court filings, Gibson’s lawyers have argued that the guitar maker has complied with both U.S. and Madagascan laws in importing woods. The company sent lawyers to Madagascar to gather documents — letters from officials, export documents — that it says provide such proof.

The federal government claims that Gibson has refused to provide definitive answers to all of its questions about the wood’s origins.